Global Community Condemns Putin’s Decision to Issue Passports in Donbas

Global Community Condemns Putin’s Decision to Issue Passports in Donbas

The United Nations Security Council will hold an urgent meeting today, regarding the Kremlin's decision to simplify how Russian passports can be issued to Ukrainians living in the occupied parts of Donbas. The Ukrainian delegation requested the debate. It's scheduled for 3 p.m. local time/ 10 p.m. Kyiv time.

uatv

25.04.2019

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Within hours of a Kremlin decree coming into force, allowing Russian passports to be issued to Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories, Ukrainian officials called on the United Nations Security Council to consider it a provocation. They were soon joined by American, Canadian, German, and French officials.

Outgoing President Petro Poroshenko said Vladimir Putin’s latest political move, could be considered a new stage of occupation.

“The Kremlin is knowingly and cynically violating the international law that prohibits the occupation authorities to change the citizenship of the residents of occupied territory. The illegal issue of Russian passports using the South Ossetia and Transnistria scenario is an attempt to legitimize the Russian presence on the occupied parts of the Ukrainian Donbas. I call on the international partners to prevent the worst turn of events and to strongly condemn the destructive and criminal actions of the Russian authorities, as well as to strengthen the international sanctions regime,” he said.

The team of president-elect Volodymyr Zelenskyi has also condemned the Kremlin’s destabilizing actions.

“With the decree to issue Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens in the territories which temporarily are not controlled by our state, the Russian Federation has recognized its responsibility as an occupying state,” Zelenskyi’s team wrote.

Ukraine’s permanent representative to the Council of Europe, Dmytro Kuleba, informed the head of PACE, the Secretary-General, and ambassadors of the member countries of the Council of Europe about Putin’s decree.

“Russia is raising the stakes and making the game more complicated. Apparently, Moscow doesn’t expect Ukraine to give up,” he said.

The United States Embassy in Ukraine has called Putin’s decision absurd and destabilizing.

“Crimea is Ukraine. Donetsk is Ukraine. Luhansk is Ukraine. We condemn Russia’s recent absurd and destabilizing decree about Russian passports for Donetsk and Luhansk residents and affirm our strong support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” it wrote.

Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius stated that Putin’s decree is another violation of international law.

The U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker said that it’s a provocative decision which is part of the Kremlin’s “occupation playbook.”

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